To note the Council’s 2007 Comprehensive Performance Assessment and direction of Travel statement issued by the Audit Commission on 7 February.

The Committee was informed of the Council’s 2007 Comprehensive Performance Assessment (CPA) and Direction of Travel statement issued by the Audit Commission on 7 February.

The report to Cabinet on 21 February was appended to the report.

The Corporate Policy and Research Manager (CPRM) presented the report.  He reported that, as predicted in the Integrated Performance and Finance Report presented to the Committee in February, the Council’s overall CPA score, relating to performance up to the end of March 2007, had fallen to 2*.  The reason for this was the fall in the rating for Housing from 2* to 1*.  He drew attention to the table in the report showing star ratings by government office region.

The Audit Commission’s assessment of the Council’s direction of travel was that the Council was improving adequately.  The CPRM referred to the Commission’s summary quoted in the report, noting that it gave a mixed picture.  On the positive side, it stated that, “Performance has improved in most priority areas”, which was an improvement on the 2006 judgement that overall service levels had been maintained.    He also highlighted the references in the summary to improvements in Children’s Services, Adult Social Care and tax collection and benefits administration.  On the negative side, the summary referred to increased costs in collecting waste and limited progress on the Council’s business transformation programme.  He noted that value for money overall was described as reasonable, but that this was not measured consistently across the Council.  The inspectorates had developed some non-mandatory performance indicators for value for money that were being considered by officers.  He also mentioned the Commission’s reference to the significant weaknesses  that the Council had identified in the governance of ICT, which also noted that plans to address them had been agreed.

He drew attention to the table in the report showing direction of travel assessments by government office region.

He advised that the key to improvement was to continue to steadily improve performance against the performance indicators and to ensure the delivery of improvement plans, including those involving joint work with the Primary Care Trust, to improve value for money and to strengthen internal control arrangements.  If this was done, he considered that the Council should be well-placed for the Commission’s 2008 assessment, published in early 2009, to judge the Council’s direction of travel to be “improving well”.

In the ensuing discussion the following principal points were made:

·         The report had stated that the change in rating of the performance of the housing service did not represent a deterioration in performance but was a result of a one year change in the selection of indicators used by the Audit Commission.    It was asked how the assessment of other authorities’ Housing Services had been affected by this change.   The CPRM said that there was a mixed picture.  When the CPA had been introduced the assessments had been made on the basis of performance against performance indicators and an inspection.  The Council’s Housing Service had been given the top score of 4.  The assessment no longer involved an inspection and the judgment of the Service had been adversely affected by the one year change in the selection of indicators.  Two indicators against which the Council performed reasonably well had been removed from the assessment and one relating to the average length of stay in bed and breakfast accommodation, where the Council did not perform well, had been retained.  On the basis of a proposed further one-year change in the indicators to be used for the assessment in 2008, the score for housing seemed likely to increase to 3. 

·         In response to a further question the CPRM noted the success in reducing substantially the number of families in bed and breakfast accommodation.  However, homelessness remained a challenging issue for the Council.  The provision of affordable housing seemed likely to be confirmed as one of the Council’s top priorities in the new corporate plan.

·         It was suggested that the focus on the change to the way in which the performance of the housing service had been assessed should not be allowed to obscure the Council’s decline from one of the highest performing Councils in the region to now being one of the lowest.  This suggested that there was something fundamentally wrong that needed to be addressed.

·         Members considered that the level of performance was unacceptable.  The Committee needed to have a clear plan submitted to it that would enable it to monitor progress towards achieving the judgment of “improving well”. 

·         The Chief Executive said that performance improvement did need a stronger focus.  Noting that the Corporate Plan would allow progress to be tracked, he added that a clear strategy for improvement was required with an improvement plan for each service area, supplementing the Corporate Plan.

RESOLVED:  That the Committee’s disappointment at the level of performance to date be recorded, that the Chief Executive’s intention to bring forward an improvement plan be noted and it be requested that a copy of that plan be presented to a future meeting.